City of Charlotte Automates Service Delivery to Increase Customer Satisfaction and Reduce Costs

Submitted by kherda on December 5, 2005 - 11:32

Source:

Indus International, Inc.

Deck:

Water Utility Expands Indus Solution as Part of Comprehensive SDM Strategy

Indus International, Inc., a leading Service Delivery Management (SDM) solution provider, announced that the city of Charlotte has expanded its Indus SDM solution to automate and optimize its delivery of services in the field. The city is combining the existing Indus customer management and billing solution with new capabilities to improve inefficient processes related to scheduling, distributing and working service order requests - including closing service orders in the field and automatically updating the customer billing record. When fully implemented, the combined solution is expected to yield improved levels of customer service while also significantly reducing the costs of service delivery.

Service orders from the Indus customer management system are automatically sent to available resources in the field where service technicians use wireless technology to receive and close service orders in real-time from their trucks. The automatic updating back and forth greatly reduces manual paperwork, improves service efficiency and allows for up-to-the-minute accuracy in service status for customers.

Charlotte joins a growing list of forward-thinking municipalities that are leveraging additional capabilities within the Indus SDM solution to reinvent their service delivery for excellence via SDM strategies. The city has already experienced the benefits of Indus in optimizing its customer-facing activities in call center, billing and revenue cycle functions for several hundred thousand customers in the Charlotte and greater Mecklenburg County in North Carolina. According to the city, it generates approximately 163,000 service orders per year, and with the goal of further increasing customer satisfaction while reducing service delivery cost, the city again looked to Indus for an extremely powerful management and operational tool for field service functions. The anticipated cost savings associated with the deployment are expected to result from reductions of unnecessary field visits and reductions in manual service order processing activities.

"Indus is an important partner for us in achieving what can be a tricky balancing act: maximizing service delivery reliability and customer delight while keeping service costs low," said Chip Harris, Business Systems manager at the city of Charlotte. "Indus offers us both the technology and the specific industry expertise we need to turn a Service Delivery Management vision into a business reality."

"Indus customers like the city of Charlotte are generating new and even deeper value by embracing Service Delivery Management," said Greg Dukat, president and CEO of Indus International. "Integrating and optimizing the various business processes that all play a role in service delivery - from the call center to the field to the monthly billing statement - is the necessary foundation for achieving world-class performance."